Tommy Dixon seems like a good writer who is living a life I admit some jealousy of. So I’m not knocking him when I say that I was not particularly moved to reflection by his latest piece on American Christmas Etc. — held back by caveats and whatnot, and, frankly, I don’t mind the borrowedness of it all.
Still, when he says in a footnote that “if you think about it, it’s a strange way to spend your time: walking around in brightly lit unfamiliar rooms, staring at objects made overseas you could or couldn’t buy and probably don’t need,” (caveat: O, reason not the need!) I hear precisely what Wendell Berry called “dumbfoundment / of the living flesh in the order of spending / and wasting.”
Honestly, I’ve been lucky dipping the shit out of Wendell Berry lately and he’s (unsurprisingly) batting a thousand. The bulk of the short poem that line comes from consists of a series of “remembers,” and it includes one of my favorite simple-big lines: “Remember the great sphere of the small / wren’s song.”
Remember the small
secret creases of the earth—the grassy,
the wooded, and the rocky—that the water
has made, finding its way. Remember
the voices of the water flowing. Remember
the water flowing under the shadows
of the trees, of the tall grasses, of the stones.
Remember the water striders walking over
the surface of the water as it flowed.
Remember the great sphere of the small
wren’s song, through which the water flowed
and the light fell. Remember, and come to rest
in light’s ordinary miracle.